What I enjoyed about my readings of Merton and about his life were the struggles he faced. The death of his parents and brother, his youth of drinking and carousing, his constant yearning for meaning to his life and a purpose to his life. His autobiography, "The Seven Storey Mountain" clipped, abbreviated and censored extensively by the Abbott and higher ups in the catholic church, must be juxtaposed with his Journals. These journals now kept at Bellarmine University in Louisville, tell of a man in pure angst over what to do and where to go next?
How much is this like all of us? like me, yes! Merton tried to relate and advise and early on particularly in the "Mountain" he was preachy, later he became much less so and more extolling in his thoughts and contemplations. He was a man, not just a monastery man but a real conflicted man. Merton tempted by all things, whiskey, women and song was growing in 1968 and his death cut short perhaps his greatest efforts at writing and relating his humanness to us all.
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